Note to Oregonpapa regarding Taj Mahal's mystery guitar player…Jesse Ed Davis became a friend of mine when he was hanging out in Honolulu in the early 80s, borrowed a 60s Vibrolux from me and produced some stuff for a band I knew...a true guitar genius and cool dude who had more soul and technique than nearly anyone I've heard perform anywhere (he used to sit in here and there in Honolulu clubs)...left us way before his time…look him up.
I have a friend who is an owner of a well regarded hifi "salon" who had a pile of SR Black fuses hanging around from some show or something, and after noting my suspicion about SR's inexplicable technology, he leant me a half dozen or so of the things about a month ago (he refuses to use them as he says they "blow too easily"…his words). I stuck them in my tube amp, my preamp, and the power supplies for my dac and phono preamp, reversed them after a couple of weeks per mythological theory (2 blew in my amp…I guess you actually do need to ignore SRs ratings). I even had them switched out by a friend without my knowing for sure that they were in or out so I could sort of "double blind" them. During this exercise I tried hard to be as objective as my previously described "Bully and Coward" demeanor will allow, and the results were as follows: These things don't provide any audible improvement over whatever fuses I had in my gear (my original Littlefuses and other nameless fuses are all back in their former places), and they're sort of dangerous (they blow, literally). I even recorded my system with my digital recording stuff using a great mic, to see if the same recording at the same level with and without the SR mojo in play could reveal anything (asked some well regarded audio pro friends to suffer through these recordings with similar head scratching non-results…many thanks)…I tried man…I gave the things a shot…my conclusion is SR fuses are fooling many into paying 500% of what non "quantum" fuses cost for a placebo that provides membership in the I Think I Can Hear Things Club, which may actually be worth it to the SR fanboy base. Sorry kids…I tried.
I have a friend who is an owner of a well regarded hifi "salon" who had a pile of SR Black fuses hanging around from some show or something, and after noting my suspicion about SR's inexplicable technology, he leant me a half dozen or so of the things about a month ago (he refuses to use them as he says they "blow too easily"…his words). I stuck them in my tube amp, my preamp, and the power supplies for my dac and phono preamp, reversed them after a couple of weeks per mythological theory (2 blew in my amp…I guess you actually do need to ignore SRs ratings). I even had them switched out by a friend without my knowing for sure that they were in or out so I could sort of "double blind" them. During this exercise I tried hard to be as objective as my previously described "Bully and Coward" demeanor will allow, and the results were as follows: These things don't provide any audible improvement over whatever fuses I had in my gear (my original Littlefuses and other nameless fuses are all back in their former places), and they're sort of dangerous (they blow, literally). I even recorded my system with my digital recording stuff using a great mic, to see if the same recording at the same level with and without the SR mojo in play could reveal anything (asked some well regarded audio pro friends to suffer through these recordings with similar head scratching non-results…many thanks)…I tried man…I gave the things a shot…my conclusion is SR fuses are fooling many into paying 500% of what non "quantum" fuses cost for a placebo that provides membership in the I Think I Can Hear Things Club, which may actually be worth it to the SR fanboy base. Sorry kids…I tried.